English Civil War

The Civil Wars of the 17th century prompted pioneering medical care and welfare, provided by the state not just for soldiers but for the widows and children they left behind, as Eric Gruber von Arni and Andrew Hopper show.

Accounts of the second siege of the royalist stronghold in Dorset during England’s Civil Wars have romanticised the role of its aristocratic owner. But was Mary, Lady Bankes even there? Patrick Little investigates.

On the Restoration, Charles II pardoned the many supporters of Cromwell’s Protectorate, with the exception of those directly involved in the execution of his father. These men now found their lives to be at great risk and several fled the country, as Charles Spencer explains.